Margaret Harrington, host: I know you mentioned Arnie Gundersen, the chief engineer at Fairewinds, and he said that he measured the radiation there, too. Could you talk about that a little bit?

Maggie Gundersen, Fairewinds Energy Education founder and CEO: He’s working with some other scientists who are studying — both Japanese scientists, the samples that they took, and the US scientists who are evaluating the samples — and they’re finding astronomical amounts of radiation, even in downtown Tokyo outside of METI’s door. METI is the regulatory agency over nuclear power… When he and others were downtown in Tokyo, they took samples right there in a garden right outside the door and on the front doormat, and these are really, really high samples. Frightening, because people walking in Tokyo will then be inhaling that dust. What was the film we saw from Japan that had the mothers who were in an area where kids play and run from middle school?

In Tokyo, police will soon deploy a drone designed to take out suspicious drones or drones that enter into restricted airspace.

“Terrorist attacks using drones carrying explosives are a possibility,” a senior member of the police department’s Security Bureau told the Asahi Shimbun website. “We hope to defend the nation’s functions with the worst-case scenario in mind.”

A heat wave that has already killed dozens and sickened thousands in Japan reached ominous thresholds Wednesday as new heat records for intensity and duration were set in Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

Tokyo reached 35.1 degrees Celsius (95.2 degrees Fahrenheit) Wednesday, marking its fifth consecutive day of highs at or above 35 C (95 F). According to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, this set a new all-time record for the most consecutive days at or above that threshold since records began in central Tokyo in June 1875. The city had already reached 35.1 C by 10:53 a.m. local time Thursday, according to preliminary JMA data, extending the streak to a sixth day.

A playground in Tokyo turned out to be contaminated with radiation levels that 2,000 times exceed the maximums permitted in areas adjoining the devastated Fukushima nuclear plant. Authorities fear some children have been exposed to radiation influence.

The administrative office of Toshima ward in northwest Tokyo reported that soil probes showed 480 microsieverts per hour. Two hours of exposure at such levels would equal one year’s maximum allowable dose of radiation.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe awoke on Wednesday to find a half-meter-wide drone, contaminated with trace levels of radioactive cesium, on the roof of his office in Tokyo. Of course this is nothing new for Washington where a drone crash-landed on The White House lawn in January and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that Japan is looking to tighten laws governing drones (ahead of next year’s G7-summit and the 2020 Olympics). Of course, the police have explained cesium isn’t harmful to humans(though we suspect they aren’t stupid enough to drink it).